I ventured close to the cage and was greeted with a nasally cry. "I'LL GRIND YOUR BONES TO MAKE MY BREAD". Ever polite and willing to give a new... let's go with... acquaintance the benefit of the doubt, I replied, "I beg your pardon?" "I'LL. GRIND. YOUR. BONES. TO. MAKE. MY. BREAD." "Indeed. I thought that was what you said. Unleavened or have you some powder in that cage?" "What?" "The bread. Are you intending on hard biscuits or something more sophisticated?"
This left the beast flummoxed since I doubt it had much in the way of a refined palate. Bread was something that I had no real personal experience with before the footrest but all civilized beings are familiar with it through birds who are great fans of that particular foodstuff. They were always praising it to the heavens that they descend from; I once knew a sparrow who had claimed to have sampled wide varieties of it from across the entire world. Counterinituitively, she often insisted that rockclads, of all things, were the best bakers and attributed it to them not having much else to look forward to in life. Though, to be fully honest, I've never yet met a bird who didn't considered him-or-herself to be the world's greatest living authority on baked goods.
Since arriving at this mixing pot of venality, vanity, and violence though, I have sampled a bit of those wares myself. Digbeards make it in the oddest fashion; they start with flour, which I understand is the customary and universal ingredient. The flour is made by taking something and grinding it into a dust; usually some straggly weed or another. The next process is to add something to the flour and then baking it to make biscuits. Something here can be taken to mean almost anything so long as it is roughly edible and some things that probably should not be. Cheeses, fruits, milk, fermented beverages, small vermin, medium vermin, larger vermin, meats, fats, undocumented sundries; the world's is a digbeard baker's oyster when it comes to bread ingredients and it is not impossible that the shell will be tossed in itself for flavor. At the very least, ground up for lightly dusting the top of said biscuits. I witnessed this first hand when my blueclad was apparently temporarily press-ganged into working in that field because of a footrest shortage of qualified laborers.
These biscuits are, on the whole, surprisingly edible and I am not above sneaking one from time to time. They'd never notice anyway since the digbeards often make them in ridiculously large quantities. Do watch those biscuits made with fermented beverages though as too many of those will give you the hobblegobbles as Great Aunt Matilda was wont to say.
The pointed-ear folk bread, medo I think it is called, is one that much is made of, particularly by smaller varieties of birds, but I cannot say much for it myself. It seems to barely make an impression especially when set next to the digbeard variety; I should not be surprised if the latter dent a stone slab in large enough quantities by sheer weight. I suppose the taller folk almost make some attempt or another at it but I've never encountered any of it to say.
Next time: Bread? Seriously? After almost two ye-
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Topic: The Life and Times of Reginald Goblinstomper, Elephant at Large. (Read 52697 times)